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We must have had some vague idea of exploring the little known parts of China, for we
had certainly intended to visit Allan in Rangoon. It was probably at Colombo that Rose
made up her mind that she was pregnant; for I remember that our shooting expedition in
Hambantota, in the south-eastern province of Ceylon, was faute de mieux. We
thought we had better get back to Boleskine for the event; and yet we had to justify our
journey by some definite accomplishment. So we left Colombo for Galle and thence up
country. It is strange that I fail entirely to remember how we got to the jungle. But
rough notes tell me that it was by coach, and that we left the base village in four
bullock carts on Monday the fourteenth of December. I quote my entry of January 1st, 1904
(some lines are carefully erased. I cannot tell why or imagine what I had written).

Jan. 1st.

Began badly: missed dear and hare. So annoyed. Yet the omen is that the year is well
for works of love & union; ill for those of hate. Be mine of love!

This entry does not sound as if I were still wholly lunatic in the rays of the
honeymoon. The explanation is that the mere fact of getting back to camp life reawakened
in me the old ambitions and interests. It may be part of my feeling for ritual that to put
on certain types of clothes is to transform my state of mind. However lazy I may be, I
have merely to change trousers for knickerbockers to feel athletic at once. There is also
the point that I make a profession of virtue when reminded of certain dates, just as a
totally irreligious man might go to church at Christmas. The subsequent entries give no
hint that my mind was really turning to its ancient masters. The sole entries concern
sport and camp life; and they are very meagre.

I have never been able to enjoy reading chronicles of slaughter, and I do not propose
to inflict any such on the world. They are as monotonous and conventional as those of
mountaineering. Sportsmen and climbers follow the fashion with frightful fidelity. Norman
Collie wrote the only book on mountains which possesses any literary merit. Mummery's is
good because he really had something to say, but his style shows the influence of Collie.
Owen Glynne Jones produced a patent plagiarism of Mummery's style; and when it came to the
brothers Abraham, the bottom was reached. And what a bottom! In fact, two.

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Of the older writers, Leslie Stephen is the only one worth mentioning, and to him
mountaineering was of secondary interest. Tales of hunting, shooting and fishing are
equally tedious. They are only tolerable in fiction such as Mr. Jorrocks and The
Pickwick Papers. Travelers having wider interests are more readable. Sir Richard
Burton is a supreme master; the greatest that ever took pen. He has not one dull
paragraph. Cameron and Mary Kingsley must not be forgotten for a proxime assessit.

Certain incidents of this shoot are worth passing notice. Rose had an attack of fever
on the seventh of January. For the first time since my marriage I had a moment to spare
from celebrations of Hymen. I sat at my camp table in my Colonel Elliot's chair and wrote
the poem Rosa Mundi, the first for many months. I sing to her, recall the
incidents of the birth of our love, hint at the prospect of its harvest, and weave the
whole of the facts into a glowing tapestry of rapture. It was a new rhythm, a new rime. It
marks a notable advance on any previous work for sustained sublimity.

Physically and morally, Rose exercised on every man she met a fascination which I have
never seen anywhere else, not a fraction of it. She was like a character in a romantic
novel, a Helen of Troy or a Cleopatra; yet, while more passionate, unhurtful. She was
essentially a good woman. Her love sounded every abyss of lust, soared to every splendour
of the empyraean. Eckenstein adored her. When I published this poem, which I did privately
under the pseudonym of D. H. Carr, from the feelings of delicacy, Eckenstein was actually
shocked. He did not care much for my poetry as a rule; but he thought Rosa Mundi
the greatest love lyric in the language. (As a cold fact, its only rival is Epipsychidion.)
But he held it too sacred to issue. "It ought," he said, "to have been
found among his papers after his death."

I can understand the sentiment of this view, but cannot share it. I wanted to make
humanity holier and happier by putting into their hands the key of my own success.

And in my diary there is no allusion to the poem. (It may in fact have been written
during an earlier illness of rose --- on December 15th --- but I don't think so, because I
connect the inspiration with eating buffalo steak, and on the earlier date I was only
eating snipe.) I have only noted, "Rose ill, one bloody birdling, bread arrived in
P.M."

I am not by any means a mighty hunter before the Lord, but I am certainly very fond of
big game shooting. I thoroughly enjoy the life which goes with it and I like the high
moments of excitement and danger; they atone for the tedium of the stalk. I have no use
whatever for the battue, even if it is a matter of bears and tigers. As for
grouse and pheasants, my pleasure in the exercise of my skill is marred by the
subconscious feeling that I am dependent on others for my sport. Moreover, the element of
combat is missing. I can get a great deal of amusement out of rough shooting for the

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pot; but artificiality of any kind is the very devil in sport. I do not even care for
shooting from a machan. I like to be just one of the jungle folk and challenge
any fellow animal I meet. I suppose that, logically, I should disdain the use of weapons.
I never did.

My most amusing adventures have been always when I strolled alone into the jungle
without trackers or bearers, met a boar, a bear or a buffalo by chance or the exercise of
native wit, and conquered him in single fight. My native servants used to be horrified at
my proceedings, very much as orthodox mountaineers have been at my solitary climbs. They
did not doubt my prowess with the rifle; they respected it because they understood it. But
they had been accustomed to white men relying on them for light and leading, and they made
sure that I should be hopelessly lost without them in the jungle. Perhaps the chief part
of my pleasure consisted in the problems presented by having to find my way home, very
likely in the dark, after having pursued some quarry by a devious route, by virtue of my
sense of direction, especially as impenetrable undergrowth, uncrossable patches of water,
or marshes, may complicate matters very seriously.

The most dangerous animal in Ceylon (there are no tigers, and if there were, the
statement would stand) is the buffalo. One can distinguish a wild from a tame buffalo by
his psychology. If he is wild, he runs away; if he is tame, he charges you. Yet these
fanatical partisans of "Asia for the Asiatics" permit themselves to be ridden,
cursed and bullied by brats not six years old. The buffalo is always savage and always
intelligent enough to know who has wounded him. He is also infinitely courageous and
vindictive. Many tigers will turn tail even when slightly but painfully wounded. But the
buffalo never gives in morally or physically, and shows almost human powers of strategy
and tactics in his vendetta. His vitality is incredible; the gaur (a not dissimilar
species) which killed Captain Sayers in Burma had seventeen bullets from heavy rifles in
him while he was goring and trampling the aggressor. The other Englishmen present could no
nothing to save him.

One evening I shot a sambhur; the great stag (miscalled elk) of Ceylon. He was standing
some three hundred yards away, across a small lagoon. He went off like a streak of
lightning. It was impossible to follow him and I thought I had missed him. But two days
later I came on him by accident, twenty-five miles from where I had shot him. My bullet
had penetrated the lungs and grazed the heart. I cannot help thinking that there is
something in the apparently absurd contention of certain mystics that life does not depend
wholly on the integrity of the physiological apparatus, but on the will to live. I have
dropped the most powerful animals stone dead with a single shot in the right place; but if
that first shot happens not to kill him outright, he is so inflamed with fury that you can
riddle him with bullets

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in the most vital spots without further disabling him. I know it sounds like utter
nonsense, but I have seen it again and again. The sambhur above mentioned is only one
case.

One day I was told of an exceptionally fine wild buffalo bull who was so lost to all
principles of propriety that he used to come down every evening to enjoy a heard of tame
cows. I felt that I could never face Exeter Hall1 in the future if I
allowed this sort of thing to go on. The only sign of grace in this bull was that he had a
guilty conscience and departed for the Ewigkeit at the first hint of human
proximity. The cows were accustomed to feed in a wide flat country. It was impossible to
approach them in the open. I crawled out to the edge of the jungle and law low, hoping
that they would come near enough for a shot. They did. But I misjudged the range; and my
bullet, by the most curious luck, pierced the near fore hoof of the bull. He made off
indignantly for the jungle at a point some three or four hundred yards from my ambush.

Ten minutes later "I stood tiptoe upon a little hill" and looked around me
"with a wild surmise". I knew where I had hit him by the way he limped, and that
he was no more put out of action than Battling Siki, if I had trod on his pet corn. I knew
that a buffalo bull can conceal himself in the Ceylon jungle as effectively as a bug in a
barracks, and I knew that he was perfectly informed of my character and intention. I knew
that I was nervous by the way I gripped my rifle (my principal battery, by the way, was a
10-bore Paradox with lead and also steel core bullets, and a .577 Express, both double
barrelled). As I stood, I realized for the first time the responsibility of the white man.
I had to exhibit perfect aplomb. No sign of the bull!

Presently, the trackers found the trail. My bullet having pierced his hoof, there was
no blood. The only signs of his passage were bruised and broken twigs, and occasional
footprints. We came up with him pretty soon. He was standing stock still, listening for
his life, with his back turned to us. I was not thirty yards away and I aimed at the
bull's eye ---pardon the introduction of a euphemism from ancient Egypt. It is the most
effective shot possible. If your bullet rises, it will smash the spine; otherwise it must
pass through the soft vital parts. But the bull merely bolted. I could not even fire my
second barrel. Again and again we came up with him. The track was easy to follow. He was
bleeding profusely and going slowly. Again and again I fired, but he always got away.
Nothing seemed to cripple him, though one would have thought that he must have been more
hole than bull by this time.

At last he turned at a small clearing. As I came out from the thick jungle, I saw him
not ten yards away. He lowered his head to charge. My bullet struck him again in the Ajna
Cakkra, if a bull has such a thing; anyway, in

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At that time headquarters of Evangelicalism.

the middle of the forehead just above the eyes. This time he dropped. It was my
nineteenth bullet and only the first had failed to strike him in a vital spot.

Talking of being charged: the one beast I really fear is the leopard. The tiger gives
one a chance, but the cheetah is like an arrow; he is practically invisible as a mark, and
one feels that it is impossible either to stop him or get out of his way. He is hard
enough to see at any time; but end on in dim thick undergrowth, he is the limit. I feel,
too, that his anger is mean and ignoble, and I have never been able to oppose this type of
attack. I can respect the rage of the tiger, but the hatred of the leopard is somehow
servile and venomous. The bear is a deadly enemy if he gets to grips and he is nearly as
hard to kill as the buffalo. One feels, too, rather sorry to kill a bear;one can never
forget that he is at heart a friendly fluffy comfortable brute.

The wild boar, which one may shoot in Ceylon, as pig-sticking is impossible owing to
the nature of the country, is a furious and dangerous quarry, but it gives one a peculiar
satisfaction to out him, to stand

Right in the wild way of the coming curse
Rock-rooted fair with fierce and fastened lips,
Clear eyes, and springing muscle and shortening limb ---
With chin aslant indrawn to a tightening throat,
Grave, and with gathered sinews like a god,

and biff him

Right in the hairiest hollow of his hide
Under the last rib, sheer through bulk and bone
Deep in ---

and see

The blind bulk of the immeasurable beast
... bristling with intolerable hair

lying in front of one, and feel that one has done a good turn to Venus. One of my
boars, by the way, gave me a lesson in literature. I came across his body two days after
the battle and it hit me in the eye --- to say nothing of the nose --- with Baudelaire's
"Charogne".

Beside the path, an infamous foul carrion,....Stones for its couch a fitting sheet.

Its legs stretched in the air, like wanton whores....Burning with lust, and reeking venom sweated,
Laid open, carelessly and cynically, the doors....Of belly rank with exhalations fetid.

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Upon this rottenness the sun shone deadly straight....As if to cook it to a turn,
And gave back to great Nature hundred-fold the debt....That, joining it together, she did earn.

The sky beheld this carcase most superb outspread....As spreads a flower, itself, whose taint
Stank so supremely strong, that on the grass your head....You thought to lay, in sudden faint.

The flies swarmed numberless on this putrescent belly,....Whence issued a battalion
Of larvae, black, that flowed, a sluggish liquid jelly,....Along this living carrion.

All this was falling, rising as the eager seas,....Or heaving with strange crepitation ---

There was an utterly unspeakable fascination in watching the waves of maggots. The
surface undulated with the peculiar rhythm of the ocean.

To Baudelaire, as we know, a similar sight suggested his "Inamorata". I was
presumably too blindly in love with Rose to see the resemblance; the main impression on my
mind was more impersonally philosophical. I thought of the 13th Key of the Tarot, of the
sign of Scorpio, the invincible persistence of life perpetuating itself by means of that
very putrefaction which seems to shallow minds the star witness against it. Here were
vermin feeding on corruption, yet the effect was of lambent vibrations of white
brilliance, disporting themselves in the sunlight --- here, quit! Am I a sportsman
describing his heroic feats, or am I not?

The elephant, "the half reasoner with the hand", is in an entirely different
category from any other animal. I felt much more like a murderer when potting a hathi than
when it is a monkey, though I perfectly understood the emotion of the average Englishman
in this conjuncture. Nor is the elephant easy to shoot. The odds against hitting him in
the vital spot are very great; and strange as it may sound, in country like Hambantota, he
is very difficult to see at all. In the whole province there are really very few trees of
notable stature, yet the undergrowth (including smaller trees) is so think and so high
that it is rarely possible to see an animal even when one is close to him. I remember once
being so near to an elephant that I could have prodded him with a salmon rod; but I could
not see one inch of all his acres. He was feeding on small twigs; I could hear every
gentle snap; I could hear his breathing; I could smell him. If he had taken it into his
head to turn or if the wind had shifted, my number would have been up. He could have
trampled his way to and over me without an effort, while I could not

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have forced my way to him in five minutes. He went off quietly and I never had a chance
for a shot.

One elephant whose track I followed took the camp of a Frenchman in his morning stroll.
The man's wife had taken him out to Ceylon to keep him way for alcohol, but prohibition
forgot the proverb, "Out of the frying-pan into the fire". The elephant got him
before I got the elephant.

One of our most beautiful camps was a sort of dak baghla near the shores of a superb
lake. Open on its principal arc, the further shore merged into marshes. In the shallow
waters at the edge grew magnificent trees whose branches were festooned with legions of
flying foxes, as they call the species of bat whose breast is furred with marvellous red
and white. I thought I would kill a few dozen and make my wife a toque and myself a
waistcoat. We went out in a boat not unlike a clumsy variety of punt to catch them in
their sleep. They keep no guard; but at the firs gunshot they awake and the air literally
becomes dark with their multitude. One has merely to fire into the mass. One of the bats,
wounded, fell right on my wife and frightened her. It may have been thirty seconds before
I could detach her from his claws. I thought nothing of the matter; but it is possible
that her condition aggravated the impression. Our beds in the baghla were furnished with
four stout uprights and a frame for mosquito curtains. I suppose in so remote a district
they had been made of unusually strong poles. I was awakened in the dead of night by the
squeal of a dying bat.

I remember debating whether I was in fact awake or not, whether the noise, which was
horribly persistent, might not be part of a dream evoked by the events of the day. I even
called to Rose to resolve my doubts. She did not answer. I lighted the candle. She was not
there. My alarm completed my awakening. The bat squealed hideously. I looked up. I could
not see any bat. But there was Rose, stark naked, hanging to the frame with arms and legs,
insanely yawling. It was quite a job to pull her down. She clung to the frame desperately,
still squealing. She refused utterly to respond to the accents of the human voice. When I
got her down at last, she clawed and scratched and bit and spat and squealed, exactly as
the dying bat had done to her. It was quite a long time before I got her back to her human
consciousness.

It was the finest case of obsession that I had ever had the good fortune to observe. Of
course it is easy to explain that in her hypersensitive condition the incident of the day
had reproduced itself in a dream. She had identified herself with her assailant and
mimicked his behaviour. But surely, if there be anything in Sir William Hamilton's law of
parsimony, it is much simpler to say that the spirit of the bat had entered into her.

(As I revise these pages for the press, I find myself constantly annoyed

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by having to try to find long roundabout "rational" explanations for all the
wonders I have seen and heard. It is silly, too, now that we are getting clear at last of
the obsession of Victorian cocksure materialism --- science disguised as a fat hausfrau!)

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